(part 1 here)

II

Anselm this place is in ruins!
There are holes here and there…

Alex, what else can we do now?
They said, life isn’t fair…

No, I
I accept that this is all that we have, but why,
What are we to do?
You asked that I help restore it if I have the strength,
And I will, I must Anz, I am a strong mercenary woman but,
You know I am newly with child.
How much can safely I do? And for how long can I do it?
And look at this place! Can we even sleep here tonight?
And we must, Anselm, the day is shutting its maw on us.
And in the distance, Autumn begins.
Will this place hold warmth in the winter?
Will this place hold a child in the spring?
Even repaired, is any of this possible?

Everything you have said, it is true, yet…
here we are

And here we are stuck, Anselm, this is our fate.
Anz, I have fought for my life, put sword to man,
I have fought my own mind, as you know,
when it shrieked for things you could not understand.
But right now, somehow, now is nothing like the past.
My solutions all fail, and no experience applies.
Right now, I am not just I,
When I fight now, call blood through my heart,
To my arms and my legs,
Do I deprive all that lifeblood, from the other that’s within?
I have before gone far beyond my own limits,
And further still pushed, leaving scars in some places,
But I cannot this now,
And of all the times, now I need to labour, to construct!

— — …
Alex, this situation, it is difficult, but it is not impossible.
We are not building a house, foundation to roof,
We have most of one made here before us
And on our backs? Is not all our possessions.
We will be taking trips to the city for the remainder—

—We should hire a cart man.

—Yes, perhaps.

Anselm…is that rain?

Daniel Triumph.

(You know, my birthday just passed.)